考研阅读精选：网络是最大的发明
THE WEB IS THE GREATEST INVENTIONFrom INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, January/February 2012
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Nearly two thousand years ago, three elderly Chinese men sat in thegardens of Changle Palace, arguing about what was the greatest inventionof all time.
“Tools made of rock,” said one, banging his fist on the delicate carved table.
“Paper,” said another, slamming the side of his hand.
“No, scissors!” cried the third, making chopping movements in the air. And so a game was invented.
This little tale is an invention too. We do not know exactly when Rock,Paper, Scissors was dreamed up, nor how, since in the time of Han therewere fewer ways of recording the events of the day: no photographs(invented by Louis Daguerre in 1836), no sound recordings (thephonautograph was first used in 1857) and no reliable method of storingand passing on information (more of that later).
But the factthat the game existed then, and did not before, means that it is aninvention. It may not be a contender for the greatest of all time, butrock, paper and scissors most certainly are. Inventions, for thepurposes of this debate, are tangible—technologies and processes, ratherthan more nebulous things such as ideas, principles and imaginings.Children might feel that Father Christmas (first recorded in 1616) isthe greatest invention of all time, but we are ruling him out.
Tools fashioned of rock, or stone, were probably the earliestinventions worthy of the name. First used in the Paleolithic Age, around2.6m years ago, they mark an essential progression, from proto-human tohuman. With simple tools, fashioned by pummelling one piece of rockagainst another to produce a sharp edge, early man began to shape theworld according to his needs, to build rudimentary shelters, to hunt andflay animals for food and clothing. Just about everything else followedfrom there. There is virtually nothing about the way we live today thatwould have been possible without those first stone tools.
But does longevity alone qualify stone tools for the crown? I’m notconvinced; theirs was a long, slow grind to efficacy, and in most formsthey’ve long been eclipsed. The blade, however—of which scissors arejust a manifestation, albeit an ingenious one—has been in constant usesince it was first invented at the start of the Ages of Metal, some400,000 years ago. Think of knives, swords, spears, axes, theguillotine…uh-oh. Although we depend on the blade for much of what wenow take for granted, from cutting up our food to making the electronicswhich crowd our daily life, there’s a little too much of the chop andslash about blades to make them my greatest of all time.
Sohow about the third of our Chinese gents’ suggestions: paper? Inventedby an imperial courtier named Ts’ai Lun in 105AD, it was deemed soprecious and important that successive Chinese dynasties kept it secretfor six centuries. Not something that the Dragons of today’s Den, withtheir greedy eyes and piles of cash, would be inclined to do.
It is thanks to paper that we know about its invention. The ability tokeep a written record is the foundation of mass learning. While thealphabet was invented around 2,000BC (at the same time as another usefuldevice, the umbrella), it wasn’t easy to pass around heavy stonetablets, or to manufacture and preserve papyrus scrolls in greatnumbers. The invention of paper led inexorably to books, the printingpress, newspapers and magazines, to sacred texts, art, photography andmusic scores, handed down through generations. And yet, here we are atthe dawn of what may, finally, become a paperless society. Paper maycover stone, but it is cut by scissors and burned by fire—another of thefoundations of our society.
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